Met Gala 2024: Lana Del Rey Channels Briar Rose in Thorned Alexander McQueen Gown

Lana Del Rey looked sharp at the 2024 Met Gala.

Fresh off headlining two weekends of Coachella, the “Video Games” singer stepped onto the moss-inspired carpet in a veiled cream Alexander McQueen sheath gown by Seán McGirr, who took inspiration from Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

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A haute couture version of a fit-and-flare silhouette from the label’s spring/summer line, Del Rey wore a silk, tulle and georgette corseted dress with hand-embroidered thorny vines that appeared to climb up from her skirt and behind her head. The singer finished the look with a crystal-embellished red rose corsage. The look was a nod to the British fashion house’s “crown of thorns” headpiece from the fall/winter 1996 collection of then-creative director Shaun Leane.

“I’m with Sean [McGirr at] McQueen — Oh god, I hope I don’t poke him,” Del Rey joked on the red carpet, where she stood beside collaborator Kim Kardashian. (The singer recently modeled for the reality star and entrepreneur’s Skims Valentine’s Day campaign.) “We wanted it to look like McQueen, so the shape for me when I saw it… was the most important thing, that’s definitely it. He had his own interpretation.”

“I guess it was the idea of mother nature, but the slightly more sinister aspects,” explained McGirr. The spiked branches also reference the Grimm brothers’ “Sleeping Beauty” story and its princess, Briar Rose.

“I feel like we have sister corset shapes going on,” Del Rey told Kardashian, who wore a Maison Margiela Artisanal gown made of antique silver brocade and a metal skirt by John Galliano. “It’s very architectural, I’m obsessed.”

Makeup artist Etienne Ortega used Charlotte Tilbury skin care and makeup on Del Rey, including the Beautiful Skin Foundation, Beauty Light Wand in Spotlight, eyeshadow from the Super Nudes Easy Eye palette, Pillow Talk Push Up Lashes mascara and Exagger-Eyes Liner Duo. Celebrity colorist Tracy Cunningham used Redken professional EQ hair gloss shades for the singer’s auburn tresses.

This was the musician’s third year attending the Met Gala. She previously wore Gucci to the 2018 “Heavenly Bodies”-themed soirée and a metallic Altuzarra gown to the 2012 event.

This year’s dress code, “The Garden of Time,” takes its cue from the 1962 short story of the same name by J.G. Ballard, which dovetails nicely with the latest Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute exhibition, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, which opens to the public on Friday, May 10. The Andrew Bolton-curated show spotlights fragile pieces from the institute’s archives, all viewed through a lens of nature. The exhibit’s coffee table book will be released on June 18.

Read more of The Hollywood Reporter’s Met Gala coverage here.

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